


Final Hours

by bendingsignpost



Series: Stairway to Heaven [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Deathfic, Humor, M/M, Sherlock is an arse as a ghost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-21
Updated: 2012-09-21
Packaged: 2017-11-14 18:50:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/518408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingsignpost/pseuds/bendingsignpost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You should die faster,” Sherlock recommends. “We’d both be better off.” </p><p>The second half of a double-fic collaboration between myself and <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyArbitrary/pseuds/PrettyArbitrary">PrettyArbitrary</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Final Hours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [radioproxy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/radioproxy/gifts).



> Written for the [gift exchange](http://johnlockchallenges.tumblr.com/), from a prompt from [inspectahradio](inspectahradio.tumblr.com) on tumblr:
> 
> "Anything with a supernatural element would be ace for me, i.e. Vampire!Sherlock with John as his blood donor (or vice versa), Winglock, Ghost!John haunting Sherlock or something, etc. Kidlock would be a nice prompt too! Any rating."
> 
> Supernatural, check. Vague Winglock, check. (There's flying, that counts. The actual Winglock wound up in PrettyArbitrary's part instead.) Living!John managed to haunt ghost!Sherlock unintentionally, because that's how pain works. Mostly just ghosts, though.
> 
> Beta'd by PrettyArbitrary.

He hears about it on the evening news. He was waiting for a murder, of course, but this is so much _better_.

“…her rescuer. Dr John Watson, sixty-five, attempted to hold off the three on his own…”

Were Sherlock not already standing, he would have jumped to his feet. As it is, he crowds up to the counter, straining to make sure he hears every last word from the telly suspended above it. The sandwich shop is never terribly crowded in the evenings, enough that the owner regularly watches the news without a customer changing the channel, but the volume is low and there’s little Sherlock can do to increase it.

Though the programme hardly mentions which hospital John has been taken to, it does mention that the three muggers had done John considerable damage. However long it takes to find John, he’ll still be there when Sherlock arrives. He should be. If Sherlock misses him after all this time, Sherlock is going to throw the largest tantrum the world has ever failed to observe.

The process takes longer than Sherlock would like. He first goes to the hospital closest to the crime scene. After a fruitless search, he recalls the traffic patterns that night. There would have been construction in between, too great a diversion when transporting an elderly assault victim. Strange to think of John as elderly. Sherlock never made it there himself, and he doesn’t see why John has to go ahead without him. He refuses to be reasonable on that account.

After a walk to the next closest hospital, he lurks at desks and peers over shoulders. He wanders through operating room after operating room, and while he does meet a few people, none of them are John. He points them in the right direction—if it can be called a direction—and they leave him be quickly thereafter, too stunned to do other than move on. A mindless reaction, simple fear response to dying, but one John will hopefully have as well.

But that would be convenient, and nothing is convenient, not any more. He hovers around the radiologic technicians until he finally spots one with John’s name on it.

He follows the X-ray to the ICU and there John is, flat on his back, bruised and broken, and utterly unconscious. He looks absolutely terrible. Unsurprising. John would have run headlong into it from blocks away without a thought. Reassuring. No more pretending there’s any such thing as too old for danger.

The MRI film is next. This too is hung up against a light. Doctors enter, discuss, and exit, leaving one glass door half-open. Sherlock stays to sulk. They think John will pull through. Sherlock groans and rages, kicking through this and that. Where there should be noise and sound and fuss, there’s only the unheard sound of his own voice.

When that bores him, Sherlock stands beside John, studying the casts and the bandages, the tubes and the machines. It looks so promising. Painful, but John’s always been good with pain. The physical sort of pain, at least.

He’d forgotten how annoying it was to watch, John in pain. It’s very annoying. Ultimately, Sherlock turns back to the MRI film and the X-rays. Perhaps some sort of complication could set in? Could he be so lucky?

A soft sound behind him, a change in the laboured breathing.

Sherlock whirls around, but John is already fading fast. His eyes fall shut, face turned in Sherlock’s direction. Of course it is. It has been the entire time. Movement of the eyes only, very weak.

“John?” Sherlock draws near. “Did you see me? Can you see me already? Open your eyes, open your eyes.” He crouches down, setting his face on a level with John’s. “John, stop sleeping. Either wake up or die, this is boring.”

Nothing.

Sherlock sulks.

John sleeps. His face is lined in ways it shouldn’t be. Not simply in ways it wasn’t before, but in ways it shouldn’t be. Perhaps it’s the injuries. Perhaps the lines are accelerating due to stress, the wrong kinds of stress. The strain of tedium.

Speaking of tedium, how long will this take? Sherlock sets his hand over John’s chest and slowly lowers it. Not a trace of friction to be found. No, this is not a dead man. John hadn’t seen him.

With a sigh, he reaches to squeeze John’s fingers. Oh, _yes_. Yes, some solidity there. A gradual cause of death, very possible.

Sherlock reviews the MRI and X-ray results until he finds it. He thinks he’s found it. Is this what John had seen? Lying on his back, low on blood and full of painkillers, and John sees it from across a room. A brain-bleed. How will that interact with the painkillers? The painkillers will mask it, won’t they? It might go unnoticed.

He crosses his fingers, laughs at himself for superstition, then laughs again. If superstition can’t work for a ghost, it will never work for anyone. Hardly a conclusive experiment, but certainly something to do while he waits.

 

  
John is dying slowly, Sherlock soon discovers. Very slowly.

Very, very slowly.

“Hurry up!” Sherlock whinges. The occasional outcry is simply to determine whether John can hear him yet, and so far, all results are negative. He sits on the only chair in the room, or rather, he holds himself aloft over the chair. It’s one of the skills he can’t wait to show off.

As time passes and John fails to notify the hospital staff of Harry’s move to California, the freshly dead periodically wander through the room. Sherlock pretends not to see them. Too much bother. Start helping the clueless move on and he’ll be at it all day. He’s resorted to that sort of social interaction before, but there’s absolutely no sense in it now. He’ll not be starved for an audience much longer.

Shortly after John becomes solid to the touch up to the wrist, a more corporeal intruder appears.

She looks at John first, because she always looked at John first and that, if nothing else, hasn’t changed. Many people have been in the habit of looking to John Watson first, and many of them had always found John Watson and Sherlock Holmes were already looking at each other. That had been one of the first things to go. John’s conscious control over the turning of his own neck: atrocious. Retraining himself, forcing himself, and lashing out whenever Sherlock mentioned it. As if Sherlock’s self-interest could never serve John’s best interest.

Amusing now, in the way that everything is bright and amusing now that John is soon to die. John lies with his head turned toward Sherlock, has done for days. Perhaps he knows Sherlock is there, perhaps not. Probably not. Not yet.

Whatever the reason, John’s sleeping face is turned toward Sherlock, not toward the door and Rebecca. As if both of them are ignoring her distress together.

That might be cruel. Is that cruel? John always preferred his distress to be ignored.

John opens his eyes, his gaze finding its way through Sherlock’s body. “You never waited for me anyway,” John says, and Sherlock’s insides lurch. It’s so bizarrely psychosomatic a response that Rebecca replies before Sherlock is able. John jerks with surprise: clearly not talking to Rebecca.

This is what talking to Rebecca sounds like: painful, painful, painful, strained, trying to be good, painful.

“John...you should have someone here, you know. You shouldn’t be alone.”

“I’m here!” Sherlock shouts.

“Have you called Harry?” she continues. “You should call Harry. She deserves to know.”

The resulting silence is incredibly awkward. He’d always suspected, but it’s good to know they could be so uncomfortable without him noticeably present.

“I was never much good at talking,” John says. “I...suppose I never really tried to get over that.”

“No,” she agrees. “You never had to. He always just knew.”

“Oh, good,” Sherlock remarks. “You noticed.” At least one of them had.

Rebecca turns John’s head to face the door-side of the room, kisses his forehead, and leaves. John doesn’t turn his face back to the chair. Sherlock sits, bored, bored, so very bored, until it’s obvious John has fallen asleep that way. Perhaps he hadn’t observed Sherlock’s presence in the chair after all. Still too soon.

With a sigh, Sherlock stands and glides—he could walk, walking is easier, but he’s not about to stop showing off now—toward the other side of the room. He can sit in midair just as easily as upon a chair.

Before he’s gone more than a few feet, John wakes with a gasp.

“You’re dead.”

Sherlock blinks at him, then leans into John’s line of sight. He knows that tone. That is John’s primary tone, because, as far as Sherlock is concerned, John’s primary form of communication is talking to Sherlock. It’s the tone he directed at the chair earlier.

“You were talking to me,” Sherlock realises. “Were you? Are you? You’re staring, you’re confused, something’s off. What is it? You’ve not died enough yet to see me. Is there something else?”

“The MRI. Yeah.”

Sherlock peers at it.

“What about you, then, you wanker?”

Sherlock grins at him. “There’s a reason ‘dead boring’ is an expression, John.”

John squints at him. “What the hell is that even supposed to mean?”

Sherlock frowns and a strange change comes over John’s face. Blank confusion, and then John rubs at his eyes with the undamaged hand, trailing an IV tube as he does.

“John?”

John’s eyes search the room, but Sherlock is once again beyond his sight and hearing. Sherlock groans. So close. John closes his eyes and looks absolutely terrible. It’s bothersome in a way Sherlock doesn’t like to be bothered. It pricks at him. He sits back down on the chair to sulk.

“I should tell someone,” John murmurs. “‘My hallucination told me I'm dying. But that hallucination was Sherlock, so I’m sure he knows what he's talking about.’” John sighs and looks at him. “Rebecca was right. You really did spoil me.”

Sherlock blinks. “Can you see me again?”

No, John is already looking around the room again. Not in search of anything this time, simply looking. Dwelling on his own demise, no doubt. The man looks miserable.

“You should die faster,” Sherlock recommends. “We’d both be better off.” He sighs, a great heaving one.

They sit in silence until John begins speaking again.

“Never could imagine you in the country life, you know. I tried when I heard about it, but all I could think of was you hunched over the kitchen table with an oxy-torch. Bet you didn’t get two months before you were gagging for a case again. Lestrade told me you still put in some hands-off consulting work for him sometimes, if he asked nicely. I always wondered if your hair turned at all...”

“...You do know I’m here, don’t you?” Sherlock wonders.

“Did you ever miss me? I wondered sometimes. I...” John’s voice breaks. Something in Sherlock’s throat tries to do the same.

“Did it hurt?” John asks in a small voice. “Did it feel like this for you? I never meant to hurt you, you know. I didn’t mean it like that. I just wanted...”

Sherlock rolls his eyes, fighting off the seriousness of dying. John shouldn’t be doing this. John should fall unconscious and never wake up alive, not blather on and prompt the same old arguments. “Oh, no, you only _meant_ to keep bringing strangers into our lives until you could force me out of yours. Well done, John, what did you think you wanted? Hm? What did you want?”

There is a long silence.

“I should’ve been there, shouldn’t I,” John whispers into the darkened room. “I should’ve been there, because if I had been, you might not have died. You should be here right now.” His laugh chokes off in his throat. “The _stupidest_ fucking way to die, Sherlock. A fucking bee sting, of all things. For want of an epi-pen. Moriarty couldn't kill you jumping off a fucking rooftop, but you couldn’t genius yourself a beekeeper’s suit with external pockets? Goddamit, I never could leave you alone.”

The suit had had external pockets. Sherlock had simply kept his epi-pen in a trouser pocket. In hindsight, one of his poorer ideas. “Hardly the stupidest way, John.”

John simply stares up at the ceiling. Sherlock has seen him so inconsolable on only two other occasions.

 

  
Visitors begin to come in the next day. It’s annoying. Sherlock stands guard at the door, daring the idiots to pass through him. They do, but they have an obvious reluctance to do so.

“Still chasing criminals at your age, John?” one man asks. Murray, Sherlock thinks.

“You'd chase criminals at any age,” Sherlock says from over by the door. “I don’t know why you ever stopped.”

John glances at him but doesn’t reply.

Sherlock’s eyebrows shoot up. Promising.

Only once Murray leaves and shuts the door does John begin to talk.

“It feels so wrong not to have you here,” John confesses.

“I am here--”

“I feel like you’ve claimed the chair for yourself and forbidden anyone else to sit in it.” John contemplates the chair, whose cheap padding remains pristinely unsquished despite Sherlock’s occupancy. “Not that many of them have stayed long enough to sit.”

“No, that would have been uncomfortable.” Sherlock ruffles his hair hard. “Look, can you see me, or can’t you? One or the other John?”

John rolls his eyes. "You're a figment of my imagination. Shouldn't you be less of an arse?"

"John, there is no version of me that is less of an arse."

John glares at him, directly at him. “Believe me. I lived with you for ten years, it’s hard to miss.”

Sherlock hums and smiles. “Mm, and more time to come.”

John sucks in a hard breath, hurt clear across his features. Not physical pain, no. John never shows that. “I didn’t leave. You drove me out.”

Sherlock stares at him. “What?” He tilts to the side, but John’s eyes remain fixed to the same spot. “Oh. You _are_ hallucinating. Well that’s tedious. You’d better stop doing this after you’re dead.” He will, Sherlock knows. He should.

“Nothing but the truth?” John demands over him. “Oh, that’s rich, you lied to me anytime it suited your purposes.”

“You never told me not to!” Sherlock protests, a kneejerk response, then groans. Nothing is more pointless than arguing when unheard.

“Shut up,” John tells himself. “Just shut up, you don’t need this.”

“No, hallucinations never rank high for necessity,” Sherlock agrees. “I’m not sure whether to be flattered or offended, honestly.”

“Fuck off!” John snaps, and then starts coughing.

Sherlock doesn’t budge, incredibly annoyed that John is still shouting at the wrong spot in the air. “If you honestly can’t tell if I’m me or not... It’s not been that long. Or is your memory that shit? Wait, you’re shaking. Why are you shaking?”

The shaking worsens, the machines beeping, then blaring. Pain contorts John’s face, drags tears from his eyes, and oh, _oh_ , this is it. Grotesque in the extreme, but the end.

Hospital staff rushes in and Sherlock takes up position at John’s side amid the shouting. The living try to avoid him, he knows, but standing in the way does little to stop them from treating John. “Let him _die_!” Sherlock shouts. “It’s not that difficult!”

No one pays him any heed, and Sherlock resigns himself to standing with his hand over John’s, feeling his ability to touch increase regardless of what the doctors do. Good. That’s good.

 

  
An eternity later, John wakes up again. It’s obvious through the beeping of the machines, the change in John’s heartbeat from slumber to awareness. “Tension pneumothorax,” Sherlock reports. “You went into cardiac arrest. It won’t be long now, though I suspect you’ll insist on being stubborn about it. Why stop now, after all?”

John turns his head and speaks with great effort through the oxygen mask: “How the fuck would you know?”

Sherlock draws closer to touch John’s hand. If John registers the touch, it doesn’t startle him. He might not be able to feel it yet, but Sherlock certainly can. John is blazing hot, feverish to the touch. The dying always feel this way.

Whatever John thinks he sees, he looks away from it. There’s a very familiar set to his mouth beneath the mask, one Sherlock hasn’t seen since mirrors could reflect his own face.

“You’re sulking.” It’s adorable. Not a thought Sherlock has often had about old men, but John, as always, is exceptional. Sherlock moves to better look at him. He deliberately brings his eyes to the point in mid-air where John is already staring. John means to be looking at him. Dying the long way looks so tedious.

“It’s all right, John,” Sherlock comforts him. “This will be over soon.”

From inside the mask, John smiles back. Soon, he slides back into sleep. With a sigh, Sherlock returns to his chair to wait.

 

  
The incoherency grows worse. John begins to speak to him in spots that aren’t at all where Sherlock is, rather than simply slightly off-target. Sherlock tries to prod him about his hallucinations, but John simply nods along, listening to a figment of his own imagination instead of his best friend. A figment that looks the same as Sherlock had at Lestrade’s retirement party, which is wrong. Sherlock’s hands look younger than that.

John shuts his eyes tightly, obviously pained by something. “You didn’t come to my wedding.”

“Oh, God. Not this again.”

“You shouldn’t have died twice.”

Sherlock groans. “You can lecture me when you’re dead. Happy?” He rolls his eyes. “No, obviously not.”

“Maybe it does,” John agrees, though to what, Sherlock has no idea. “It seems we finally managed to kill each other.”

Sherlock looks at him sharply. “John, just because I _want_ you to die--”

“I couldn’t go to your funeral,” John blurts out, confessing a truth Sherlock already knows. “I tried, but. I couldn’t make it out the door. I kept remembering the first time, you know, and how you came back, and...I couldn’t stop wishing you’d just get back up. I’d have been sitting there the entire time, thinking that: ‘Please get back up,’ and...I never told you. I was going to tell you. We came so close to fixing it, Sherlock. I was going to visit you, and I was going to tell you—I am _so sorry_. But then you went and died on me, like an _idiot_ , and...you always have to have the last word, don’t you. I said once you’d outlive God to get the last word in, but it’s a lot easier to die before anyone else can say anything, isn’t it?” He hesitates, possibly holding back tears. “So fine! Fine, Sherlock. You win. Congratulations, the last word is yours, forever. I hope that makes you happy.”

Sherlock looks away. “It doesn’t, actually.”

John’s laugh is a broken thing. “I know. God, but I miss you.”

Still without looking, Sherlock squeezes his hand.

John never notices.

 

  
John’s conversation grows strange and inane. Fears of falling body parts. Sherlock checks his forehead this time, and yes, death is settling in. He takes to pacing now, and sometimes, John’s eyes track him.

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock turns to look at him, brows raised in query.

John smiles ruefully. “I suppose I can say it now that you're dead and you can't hear me. You were right about Rebecca. What a mistake that was.”

Sherlock’s face crinkles in glee. He’s barely restraining himself from some sort of idiotic dance. Oh, when John dies… “I did tell you, John.”

“Yes, you did,” John agrees complacently. Why not? It can’t hurt anyone now. “You told me from the beginning, and I didn’t listen, and you were right all along.”

Sherlock blinks at him, then grins wider than before. “Are you apologising? God, that only took two decades. If you don’t remember this after you die, I’ll--”

John’s face sags in an unpleasant way. Immediately, Sherlock’s hands are on him, checking for pressure but still sliding through. Without warning, John begins to shout, to howl and rave, all at the wrong point in the air. Sherlock shouts back, shouts and shouts and tries to shake him, but there’s no point. John turns vicious, vindictive, and Sherlock goes into the hall. There’s no point in having the last word if John still can’t hear it.

 

  
John becomes exceptionally incoherent. Senile or high, it doesn’t seem to matter. It means Sherlock can ignore all of that earlier ugliness, and so he does.

 

  
“Sherlock?”

The gravity in John’s voice catches Sherlock’s attention. He turns away from the door. If any more visitors come now, Sherlock will haunt them away somehow. It’s the first time in much too long that John looks aware of his surroundings. “Yes, John?” His throat is tight, braced for more inanity or shouting.

“I need to tell you this. I need to say it, at least, even if it’s to...” John shrugs as much as he can, with the way they’ve got him taped up. “I never wanted to choose between you and Rebecca. You know that. I told you that.” He huffs a bitter laugh. “I _begged_ you. You...I would never have left you if you hadn’t made me go.”

Sherlock sits down next to him on the side of the bed. _I never made you_ , he wants to say, but doesn’t. These are last words, or what John believes to be last words, and Sherlock can respond to them all he likes once John is dead. Best hear the full argument first.

John takes his time. He blinks a little. “I was _so angry_ ,” he says quietly. “It seemed like all you ever did was leave me. What could I do? She was all you left me with. What did you _expect_?” His voice cracks and he pauses, fighting it back under control.

“Liar,” Sherlock says softly. “You chose her, John. You married her.”

John stares at him. “Well, I couldn’t marry _you_.”

Sherlock stares back. “No? Why not?”

John opens his mouth, then closes it again. Perhaps it’s surprise, perhaps it’s difficulty breathing. “Because...we weren’t like that.”

“How do you know?” Sherlock leans in, swallowing John’s personal space. He’s had a lot of time to think about this. “You didn’t try. You chose her.”

“I... Goddamn it, Sherlock! I _needed a life_. I couldn’t just hang around indefinitely, waiting for you to vanish on me again!” Definite difficulty breathing now. It won’t be long. “Did you ever try, Sherlock? Did you ever try to understand what I went through? I suppose it wouldn’t have changed anything, but it would’ve been nice to know I was worth the effort.”

Sherlock doesn’t answer. There’s no point now, not yet. Not while John might not hear.

“No, you’re right,” he says at last, with a little nod to Sherlock. “I did choose her. The first time I lost you, Sherlock, you took everything that mattered most to me along with you. I never could come to terms with that. And you know, I was so pissed off at you about that. Because-” Sherlock can’t tell if the shudder in John’s voice is emotion or his lungs failing. “Let’s not pretend you didn’t have your say. You pushed and demanded everything you could get me to give you, and then tried for a little more. And I always gave it, I know. That’s not what... It was _after_ , when I realized...I hadn’t left anything for myself, and I needed. Something stable.” John stops, shakes his head slightly, or perhaps his head simply lolls. “I needed something that wasn’t you. Something I could keep for myself, something that couldn’t hurt me so much. That’s why I married her. Because I didn’t want you to leave me alone again. And I was _wrong_.”

“I did tell you,” Sherlock answers.

“And you made sure I knew it, didn’t you? You made sure I was perfectly clear on how wrong and _stupid_ and selfish I was being.” Bitterness wells up into laughter. “But it wasn’t just me, was it, Sherlock? Because you made sure I couldn’t fix that mistake once I realized I’d made it. You shut me out. After everything we’ve been through together, everything you _put_ me through, you didn’t think I was worth a second chance.”

Sherlock groans. “John, what do you think this is?”

“And you were right, weren’t you? Oh, you were so very right, it must have made you _so happy_ when I discovered that every word you’d spoken to me was true.” John’s voice is raw, the strain of dying and confession both. “And you know, it’s all right. Because I had it coming, didn’t I? Because I betrayed you. You chose me, you put your faith in me, and then I ran away. I abandoned you and I left you all alone.” John smiles a brittle smile and closes his eyes. “God. What a mess I made.”

Sherlock lays his hand on John’s chest, feels the solidity, the living fever about to break.

“I don’t know what we were supposed to be, Sherlock,” he whispers. “And neither of us will ever find out, because I gave it all away. I made that choice for you, I took it away from you, and I’m so sorry.”

John opens his eyes and smiles up at him—a real one this time, not the brittle savaged thing he wore before—and rests his hand over top of Sherlock’s. Sherlock wouldn’t have been able to breathe if he had still needed to.

“That’s all I have to say,” John murmurs. “I think...I need to sleep now.” He breathes as deep as he can, and then sighs. He drifts off as the steady chirp of the heart monitor becomes the pure tone of a flatline. Beneath Sherlock’s hand, John’s chest grows still and absolutely solid. The hand on top of his has weight and pressure. It cools, the fever of life broken.

Sherlock touches the crown of John’s head, the greying hair. He brushes it up and only half of it moves: that half is darker, more of the sandy brown he used to know.

A giddy little giggle escapes his throat. He ruffles up the rest of John’s hair just because he can. Then he clears his throat. His grin immediately pops back up.

The nurses and the doctors come, of course, but it’s too late, too late, too late! “Won’t work!” he gleefully shouts as they go about trying to shock John back to life. It doesn’t work, not in the least, but it does make John’s body jolt and jump, separating the outlines of the corporeal and incorporeal.

“Oh, lovely!” Sherlock grips John by the arm and tugs. John slides laterally, floating at bed height even when off it. He pulls John through the room and into the hall, watching with some curiosity as the hospital gown fades away to be replaced by jeans and jumper, then army uniform, then scrubs, then jeans and jumper once more. John’s face changes as well, a curious spectrum of the familiar and less so. Liver spots appear and disappear beneath Sherlock’s hands.

It shouldn’t be possible for Sherlock’s face to hurt with smiling, but it does.

Where to bring John before he comes around? John wouldn’t have liked to see his body like that, Sherlock is certain, and Sherlock doesn’t want to put John in a crowd. No, something nice and quiet for the two of them. In a hospital? Nearly impossible. He can’t pick the morgue: too many other incorporeals. He can’t pick the roof: John would hit him. Where else? Ah, an empty office. It will have to do; John’s begun to droop.

Sherlock drags him a bit faster, gliding and running both, and he manages to get John’s body upright and his feet level with the floor. It’s a good thing he’s practiced this. That done, he stands back and waits, bouncing on the balls of his feet, hands folded behind his back. When nothing continues to happen, he bites his lip and pokes John a bit.

John startles awake with wide eyes and nearly falls forward. Sherlock catches him by the shoulders, John catches Sherlock’s forearms, and Sherlock starts laughing. John stares at him, gapes at him, eyes travelling from Sherlock’s face to his arms, to John’s fingers on Sherlock’s sleeves.

“I... _what_?” John asks.

“You’re dead!” Sherlock gleefully explains.

“No,” John says, blinking a fair bit. “You’re dead.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “More than one person can be dead at a time, John. Considering your choice in professions, I would have thought you’d have noticed that by now.”

John shakes him off with a frown and a glare. He looks around the office. “How did I get out of bed? Where is this? Nothing hurts anymore, I don’t...”

“I carried you. Hospital,” Sherlock replies, checking the answers off on his fingers. “And as I mentioned: you’re dead.”

“I can’t be dead,” John says. “I’m conscious.”

This again. “The two states aren’t mutually exclusive.”

John levels a look at him.

Sherlock groans. “Oh, you would be in denial, wouldn’t you?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Sherlock levels the look right back.

After a long moment, impossibly, John backs down. “Fine,” John says. “Fine. If I’m dead, where’s my body?”

“Back in your room,” Sherlock answers. “I brought you out of there before you could wake. Waking up in your own body isn’t a pleasant experience.”

“It’s how I’ve always woken up before,” John notes dryly.

Sherlock’s lips twitch.

John’s mouth does the same.

In unison, they look away and clear their throats.

“If I’m dead,” John asks, inspecting his own hands, “can I still be hallucinating?”

“No.”

“And how would you actually know that?”

“I waited for a schizophrenic woman to die and then asked her. She took some convincing that I was real, but did state that everything seemed normal. Besides me and being incorporeal, obviously.”

“‘Incorporeal’,” John echoes.

“Yes?”

“If I was incorporeal, I’d fall through the floor,” John reasons.

“If you _were_ incorporeal.”

John stares at him.

Sherlock raises his eyebrows.

The hug is hard and swift, and it would crush all air from him were there any air left to crush. John’s face shoves into the crook of his neck. John’s arms clamp about his middle, and the telltale tug of fabric indicates fists clenched in the back of his coat. Untrained for this sort of activity, Sherlock’s hands hover behind John’s shoulders, then tug him closer still.

“Oh my God,” John whispers into his shoulder. “Fuck. Fuck.”

Sherlock pats John’s back in what might be considered a soothing manner. John makes an odd noise, as if Sherlock has inadvertently burped him, but that’s no longer physically possible. The noise continues, and then the shaking starts, and Sherlock pulls back to find John giggling uncontrollably.

Grinning and shaking his head, holding tight to Sherlock’s arm: “If anyone could. I mean. No, if anyone could.”

Sherlock shrugs in a display of false modesty, and this sets off John anew. He keeps staring up at Sherlock, marvelling between his giggles, and Sherlock grins back helplessly. This. Just this.

“So, you, um?” John says, lifting his eyebrows.

“I um,” Sherlock confirms solemnly.

John swats his shoulder. Then, grinning, John pushes at his shoulder. Sherlock pushes back. They shove each other a bit, revelling in solidity, and when the next hug comes, Sherlock knows what to do with his arms.

“You mad wanker,” John says.

“Oh, I’m mad? You ran at three men a third of your age, armed with a cane, and I’m the mad one.”

“You’re always the mad one.”

Sherlock’s mouth strains to hold his grin.

“And, look, after the bees?” John continues. “No death looks stupid after that.”

“No,” Sherlock answers, peering into the middle distance as if considering. “Yours is still idiotic.”

“What kind of beekeeper is allergic to bees?”

“One who develops an allergy through repeated exposure, _Doctor_.”

John sobers, which is the last thing Sherlock wants.

“Anyway, it wasn’t so bad,” Sherlock adds.

“Suffocating?” John asks. His hand wraps around Sherlock’s forearm. It’s nice. Unexpectedly so, or perhaps not unexpectedly after all.

“It was quick,” Sherlock dismisses. “It certainly made death a relief. My inability to breathe wasn’t pertinent for long.”

John shakes his head at him. Disparaging but, more importantly, fond.

“Let’s go somewhere,” Sherlock urges. He shifts his arm to slide his hand into John’s. He squeezes tight.

John glances down in surprise, then shouts as Sherlock pulls him through a wall. Sherlock takes off, laughing, and John swears up a storm as they race down the halls. John flinches away rather than run through nurses and visiting families.

“Stop! Stop, stop, stop.” John drags him to a halt, surprising in his force. “Where are we going? Are we, I don’t know. Moving on?” He rubs at his chest with his free hand. The pull to pass on must be strange and new to him, not yet something easily ignored.

“Later,” Sherlock promises. “It’s not terribly urgent.”

John nods. “Then where are we going?”

“Out,” Sherlock says, nodding toward the wall.

“We’re on the second storey.”

Sherlock sighs at him.

“What?”

In demonstration, Sherlock stands on the balls of his feet, then pulls his toes up.

John stares at his face and then at his feet. “You’re... not on the floor.”

“No.”

“Oh,” John says. He tries to replicate the manoeuvre but simply bounces up and down for his trouble.

Sherlock smirks.

“Oh, shut up.” John still doesn’t take his hand back.

“The point is, John, we can fly out.”

“Are you serious? Right, you are. You’re serious.” John takes a deep breath, or the illusion of one. “Okay, yeah. That sounds amazing. Let’s do that.”

“Yes?”

John nods. “Yes.”

With a grin, Sherlock tugs him through one last wall.

“Oh my God. Oh my _God_.”

Sherlock looks down at the long drop between their feet and the pavement below, grey concrete shining yellow beneath streetlamps. “You get used to it.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.” Even so, John’s hand in his has a confident grip, no terrified clutching.

“I’m going to start moving now,” Sherlock warns, but only after he’s already started.

“Yeah, okay.”

They glide. Between buildings and down streets, along alleys and up fire escapes. Drivers and pedestrians pass by beneath them, oblivious in their lives. The occasional incorporeal calls out to them, each time turning John’s head, each time prompting Sherlock to drag him along faster. Before long, John urges him toward the river, and they swoop across the Thames. The water shines beneath starlight and streetlight both, unmarred by shadows they no longer possess.

“How did you know to come back for me?” John asks, edging down slowly to put one foot through the water.

“Report on the telly.”

“What, there’s telly in... Not heaven, is there a heaven?”

“No idea,” Sherlock replies.

Crouched in midair, one leg dipping into unparted waves, John looks at him oddly.

“What?” Sherlock demands.

“The moving on bit,” John says, touching his chest. He wears the tan knit jumper now, the same one he first killed a man for Sherlock in. “You can move back once you do, right?”

Sherlock shakes his head. “I’ve never met anyone who has. I did ask Mycroft to when he left.” Him among others, but Mycroft was the only one who seemed to share Sherlock’s curiosity.

“Lung cancer, wasn’t he?”

“Mm, but it was the heart attack that did him in.” The fourth, Sherlock is fairly certain. He’d never bothered to keep track.

John stands up from the water, pushing against a surface that isn’t there. Sherlock smiles faintly, recalling the distant days when he’d had to use such mental crutches to move about.

“So you, um,” John begins. “You never moved on? It’s weird, but I can feel the urge to. It’s...” He trails off, discomfort clear across his features.

“I obviously haven’t.”

John chews on his lip.

Sherlock buries his hands in his coat pockets.

The night shines on around them, the glow of city lighting and the gaudy brilliance of nightly river cruises.

“Could we go back to Baker Street?” John asks. “I don’t know if it’s different, but--”

“We can,” Sherlock interrupts. “Come here.” He holds out his hand.

John takes it without question, as if the muscle memory for this act had ever existed between them. Amazing, what can change.

 

  
Though descending through the roof is a viable option, they enter through the front door.

“Have you seen her?” John asks, glancing over his shoulder back at Sherlock. His lips quirk, eyes shining, and Sherlock blinks at him until he realizes he’s gone and tried to hang up his coat in its old spot.

Sherlock pulls his coat back, daring John to comment, and John simply smiles on.

“I haven’t seen Mrs Hudson,” Sherlock replies. “I assume she’s moved on, though if she elected to travel, there’s no telling where she could be now.”

“Have you travelled much?”

“Some.”

They walk upstairs, and none of the steps creak, not one. John hesitates at the top, and Sherlock nudges him forward.

“Who lives here now?” John whispers in the dark hall. Whether he expects Sherlock to simply know or assumes Sherlock has already deduced it is a small mystery in itself.

A quick look is all it takes, even when unable to turn on a light. The curtains have been left open in the sitting room. “A single woman. Her partner moved out last month—you can see where their things used to be. She hasn’t reclaimed the space yet.” Sherlock is very familiar with the patterns that leaves.

“Oh.”

Sherlock ignores him, instead inspecting the sofa before sprawling onto it.

John snorts. “Oh, God, they kept the bull’s head.”

But not the headphones. Wildly outdated, now. “He’s a perfectly adequate bull.”

“He is,” John agrees, a smile in his voice. He turns in the centre of the room, hands clasped behind his back.

Sherlock closes his eyes with a contented and entirely unnecessary sigh. He’d been so eager earlier, and now he’s simply content. Enthralled and relaxed at once. It’s fascinating, the noises he doesn’t hear as John settles down next to him. No footsteps, but the rustle of clothing. No breathing, but the breaking silence of unvoiced thought.

Sherlock rolls onto his side.

“Jimjams,” John says.

Sherlock frowns at him.

“Your coat vanished, and you’re...” John gestures toward him.

Barefoot and pyjama-clad, yes. “That happens.”

John nods. He rests his hands on the coffee table where he sits, his subconscious still clearly insisting that he’s corporeal. His eyes are soft.

“Yes?” Sherlock prompts.

“You never moved on.”

“We’ve already covered this.”

“I know,” John says. “It’s just... You never moved on.”

“I don’t know what’s over there.” He flicks a dismissive hand at the last word. “Perhaps I’ll lose consciousness. Perhaps no one will ever be able to catch up to me. I don’t know.”

“Right, and you were never curious to find out.”

Sherlock squarely meets his gaze.

“That...” John says. He looks down at his hands. He rubs one over the back of the other, an idle inspection of texture. “Could’ve been a long time to wait.”

“Four years was a long time,” Sherlock answers.

“It could have been longer.”

“Mm, yes. How fortunate for me that you’re an idiot.”

John laughs softly, still not looking at him. “Right. Well.”

Sherlock waits. It’s easy now that waiting itself is a form of fulfilment.

“How long were you listening? At the hospital.”

“I was there before Rebecca,” Sherlock says, smug and unable to resist showing it.

For once, John lets it slide. “In the chair?”

“Mostly. You seemed to know I was in the room, but not exactly where.”

“So I was hallucinating.”

“A great deal, by the sounds of it.”

“Oh.” John sounds disappointed.

“I do appreciate you acknowledging that I was right,” Sherlock adds. “Took you two decades to get around to it, but well done.”

“Right, you can shut it.”

“Can I? John, have you _met_ me?”

John grins at him helplessly.

Sherlock’s mouth matches, motion involuntary and true. He reaches, not sure what for, and John takes his hand. John joins him on the couch, solid and real, and, as ironic as it ought to sound, so incredibly alive.

 

  
In the morning, they walk. John asks him about the finer points of being dead, and years of observation and experiments tumble out, result after result jumping to the forefront of Sherlock’s mind and clamouring that John admire it first.

“Experimenting on dying people, Sherlock?” John disparages at first. “Really?”

“You wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve been mistaken for an angel,” Sherlock counters.

“Or a fallen angel?”

“That too.”

He tells John about the cases he’s solved, the victims he’s explained murder methods to. He lists the varied reactions, outrage to closure, and can finally, bitterly complain about the inability of the police to hear anything he’s saying.

John nods and hums, a rapt audience. He asks questions the way he always has, the way he always used to.

“You know,” John says once Sherlock is bored of his own stories, “I didn’t think you’d forgive me so quickly.”

“I’ve always known you’re an idiot,” Sherlock replies. “I suppose that helped.”

John swats his shoulder and shakes his head. The sunlight doesn’t touch his face, but his features still shine.

 

  
They have their first post-mortem row by three o’clock.

They’re laughing about it by five.

 

  
“How long do you want to stay here?” John asks.

Sherlock shrugs, looking out over the cityscape. Riding the London Eye is so much better when sitting on top of the capsule. “I want to keep in London until the end.” He glances to John. “Is that all right?”

“That’s what I meant, actually.”

“You’re ready to go already?”

“I suppose?” John shifts a bit, not quite able to stay on the capsule as it makes its slow circle. He’d had no problems on the way up, but coming down, he seems to forget gravity has no hold over him and makes no pains to manually adjust. Sherlock links his arm through John’s, and that helps.

“I don’t like how no one can see me,” John continues. “It’s not... It’s unnerving.”

“And floating through walls isn’t?”

“No, that’s the fun part.”

Sherlock laughs, and John laughs too.

The Eye keeps turning. The sun begins to set.

“You haven’t been dead for a day yet,” Sherlock reminds him.

“It feels normal now,” John muses. “I’m not sure why.”

“You want to leave before your funeral?”

“It’s hardly like I’m going to attend,” John says.

“Mm.”

A moment of silence, and then John gives him an odd look.

“What?”

“You went to yours, didn’t you?” John asks. “It’s exactly the kind of thing you’d do.”

“I didn’t, actually.”

“No?”

“No,” Sherlock says and looks out over the Thames. “I sat with you in your sitting room instead.”

John looks at the side of his face. Sherlock doesn’t need to see him to feel the pressure of his eyes, the touch of John’s gaze upon his cheek.

“I’m a complete arse, aren’t I?” John asks softly.

“That had better be rhetorical.”

“It is.”

The sun keeps setting. The Eye keeps turning. John stands and draws Sherlock off to the side, as comfortable in midair as if he’d been born to this. Perhaps he has. Perhaps that’s what death is. Years of questioning hasn’t ruled out that possibility.

“We’re well-matched,” Sherlock allows.

John’s thumb strokes the back of his hand.

“Are you sure you’re ready?” Sherlock asks. “I’m almost certain it’s a one-way trip. Last chance for closure.”

John smiles faintly.

Sherlock’s lips quirk. He nods. Their hands squeeze tight.

The fading begins with colour, not with light. A transition from the shades of night and into pastels, from pastels and into grey. Outlines are indistinct without colour to mark dimensions or render separation. The cityscape of London whispers away, leaving shadow to become light, and light to dim into nothing.

Hand remains in hand as grey softens, John’s form disappearing but not his presence. Sherlock moves the mouth he no longer has, the mouth he hasn’t possessed for four years, and the memory of his ears delights in a strong laugh.

United and unafraid, they slip off into the unknown.


End file.
